Lullabies for Suffering

by Caroline Kepnes et al.

  She heard, as if removed from herself, a scream tear from her lips. Her stomach lurched, flopped like a landed fish.

  And she experienced movement, a definite sensation of rushing toward something, not upward as she might have guessed, but moving forward, propelled not by her dangling feet but by some emotive force that hurtled her out, out, out.

  Before all went dark, she was punched through something gelatinous, a thick, frangible membrane that separated where she was—who she was—from something, somewhere else.

  Livy saw.

  #

  She floated in blackness that had depth, that had texture, that had presence. She felt her arms stretched to her sides, her toes pointing down, as if those directions had any meaning.

  Her eyes were closed, yet the sensation of seeing something, some essential fabric of the boundless space that surrounded her, transcended her sense of sight, her entire reliance on physical senses at all.

  Pain excoriated her. The muscles supporting her weight tore against the steel rod that penetrated them, the raw slashes through her flesh burned like lava. Agony screamed through her, rang her entire body like a bell, thrummed in every limb like a plucked guitar string.

  More than that, though, she had a sense of all of those other hanged people behind her in the warehouse, as if their pain coursed through her, too. Tuned and focused in a way that she still felt impossible.

  It built, the pain coursing through her like the ultimate of highs, piling up like a great wave against her shore, a tsunami of pain and pleasure that were indistinguishable now, merged into one overwhelming sense.

  But the coil of her addiction asserted itself, rose within her, demanded more.

  She needed more feeling, more pain, more than even this universe could seemingly give her. She thought that whatever lay beyond the door she’d just opened could offer that.

  At what price, though? Satisfying addiction always came with a price—blood, tears, life. It was always something. Now, she understood the price wasn't just for her. Everyone, everything everywhere would be the price of satisfying the suddenly cosmic addiction that rose within her.

  And she would pay that price, any price, every price.

  She reached her decision. It was no decision, really.

  As if accepting that bargain, something flared within her, a pulse of pure sensation igniting what was left of her, throwing it out into the endless void, spreading every atom of her until they were all distant, disassociated specks with no further bonds, to each other, to her, or to the untold dozens of people back in a warehouse she now could only dimly remember.

  Movement off at a distance. Something gathered in the darkness, apart from the vast cloud of atoms that used to be…Livy? Something so vast, so primeval that it transcended space and time.

  It existed before and after, in this dimension and every other, possessing a cosmic, alien intelligence so awesome it was almost a physical presence itself, separate and apart from the growing bulk of the thing.

  As the atoms of who she once was brushed against it, motes of dust in god’s eye, she felt its attention shift towards her, a seismic hunch of shoulders that rocked the foundation of the cosmos where she floated.

  If she had thought the pain she felt—the attraction that still held the atoms of what were once her essence in some sort of weak electrical bond—had reached its apex, she was wrong. At the shift of that malign presence’s attention every disassociated particle cried out, screamed into the void, vibrated in distress so profound it seemed to generate its own gravity.

  But it was nothing compared to that presence, the deep, deep malevolence roiling about it, coagulated from the very darkness it coiled in. For her? For what she was doing?

  No, she realized.

  For existence. Hers. Its.

  All of it.

  It existed out of time and space, hatred as foundational as the cornerstone of a great building.

  It reviled her, truly, ultimately, but it wasn’t anything personal.

  Just as it transcended reality, so, too, its hatred transcended all.

  It twisted before her, revealing more of itself, millions, trillions of cilia across its entire hideous surface, spreading across the cosmos, crawling through the death clouds of stars, palping distant planets.

  Everywhere.

  It was infinite, a cancerous presence that suffused the very fabric of dimensions.

  As its attention flicked from her, indifferent now, the bits and pieces of her imploded. She was hurtled together, slammed back with enough power to cause her body—she realized she was back in the warehouse now—to sway on its supports like linen on a clothesline.

  The feeling, every feeling, fell upon her, as unfamiliar as the day she was yanked from the womb. Crushed into her, all of it now bringing only pain. Every sense seemed attuned to it, no light for her eyes, no sound for her ears, no odors or textures. Pain was the all-encompassing sense now, and all her organs were tuned to that frequency only.

  Dimly, she felt the steel rod finally rip its way through the muscles, strained beyond their capacity to hold her weight. She dropped to the floor, fell to her knees. She felt every speck of grit, every grain of dirt bite into her knees, the soles of her feet.

  She held her hands before her, slick with blood, dark red in the gloom of the warehouse. She looked down at her body, at her feet. They, too, gleamed with blood.

  In a daze, she stumbled forward, turned. Behind her, she saw most of the others had fallen, too, milled about in confusion, disrupting the neat rows and aisles they'd been organized in.

  Closer now, she saw they were covered in blood as well, their bodies glistening in the null light.

  She flexed her fingers. Every movement stung with pain, every curl of muscle and shift of weight.

  Skin.

  Her skin was gone, stripped away, exposing muscles and sinews, the white sketch of bone.

  Around her, they all screamed, the screams ringing out, filling the warehouse, as they realized what had happened. Shrieking, they staggered into one another, each beseeching each, some falling to their knees like stricken penitents. Blood slicked the ground, spilled from the split of their shoulders by the steel bars that had suspended them.

  Livy realized that she was screaming too. Her throat felt raw. Droplets ran down her face, and she wasn’t sure if it was blood or tears.

  That wasn’t all. Everything around them was undergoing a radical transformation. The air thickened, dense and warm like a dog’s breath. As Livy watched, the walls of the warehouse slumped, evaporated like water on a griddle, exposing the raw weal of the night sky above. The girders and beams vaporized.

  Livy turned back, looked up where the control room was. She was sure, even from this distance, that she saw it melt away, saw the lab-coated figures of the techs effervesce. Even Dr. Atryx melted like a candle, slumping into nothing as the control room itself lost cohesion. Fittingly, the last thing Livy saw of Atryx was his smile, distorted into a Daliesque sagging grin, the corners of his lips curling to his ears, his bottom lip drooping past the dissolving bank of consoles.

  The warehouse dissipated completely, the steel rods, the cables, even the blood on the ground. It spread like ripples on the surface of a pond. The vast sea of corn surrounding where the structure stood cleared like a fog, the road, the trees on the horizon, the glow of the distant university town.

  All gone, erased like a sand mandala by the wind, wiped clean.

  Still, the chorus behind her screamed, their wails ascending into a clear sky that also peeled back, tatters and wisps of it giving way to smudges of that familiar absolute black.

  One by one the stars winked out, vanished.

  The barren earth beneath her feet was all that was left, the only thing that seemed separate from the encompassing darkness. Save for her brethren, the chorus of pain that fanned out behind her, still screaming their song into the emptiness above them, trying to fill the space between the dead stars.

  As
her humanity drifted away, carried off by the pull of that song, she thought briefly of her mother, so disapproving of everything about her. Of beautiful, lost Jennie, what might have been. Of Daphne, what might have been. The cartoon image of Velma floated into Livy’s mind, frayed at the edges like a worn carpet, then no more.

  Livy (if she was even that person anymore) lifted her bloody, skinless head to the infinite blackness surrounding her.

  What she saw awed her.

  The thing, that great presence in the void, twisted over them, lovely in its awesome serpentine shape. Iridescent ebony scales covered it, each a chiaroscuro of beautiful, heretofore imperceptible shades of black.

  It unfurled across the entire upturned bowl of the sky, emptied now of stars and galaxies, of comets and moons, of planets. Collapsed, yearning for something to fill it.

  Because of her decision, because of her bargain, her insatiable craving, the thing did just that, expanding as it uncoiled, infinite segments of it slithering into the farthest reaches of space.

  Standing there, she screamed her pain into that dark cosmos, her choir behind forming a perfect dreadful harmony. That thing inside her, a smaller version of the one filling reality, shifted too. Moved with purpose, grew within her, pulsed out along her wail, unwound into the ebony emptiness.

  She lifted her gaze, saw her addiction unwind from her, slither and slide up into the twisting S of that other. What had seemed so immense inside her she now saw was tiny, insignificant.

  As her consciousness, her awareness of self, of being Livy, faded, she saw the squiggles of those behind her ascend, join the infinite bulk of the other, remoras latching onto something that dwarfed them on a scale that was too immense to be quantified.

  The sole remaining blip that was her, that was Livy, faded, shredded away as the warehouse had, as Dr. Atryx had, as the fields and trees, her mother, even Jennie and Daphne had.

  Only her addiction remained, joined to the addiction of her choir, joined to the great addiction that was all that existed now, twisting through every nook of reality. It had gained access through the door she'd opened, her life…all life…traded away for a fleeting pleasure, a happy trip, the ultimate high.

  For she got what she’d wanted. She faded on that cold comfort.

  But she saw, oh Livy surely saw before she faded into the universal addiction she’d traded it all for.

  She saw it all.

  About the Author

  John F.D. Taff is a multiple Bram Stoker Award nominated author with more than 100 short stories and seven novels in print. The End in All Beginnings was called "the best novella collection I've read in years" by Jack Ketchum, and it was a finalist for a Stoker Award. His fiction has appeared most recently in Shadows Over Main Street 2 and The Seven Deadliest, and his latest short story collection Little Black Spots. A story in that, "A Winter's Tale," was also nominated for a Stoker. His epic novel The Fearing was released serially in 2019 by Grey Matter Press. Robert McCammon called it "Epic and powerful." His work will appear soon in the collection Midnight Land, as well as in a new novel, He Left. He lives in the wilds of Illinois with one wife, two cats and three pugs. Follow him on Twitter @johnfdtaff or learn more at his blog johnfdtaff.com.

  Beyond the Reef

  by

  Gabino Iglesias

  Beyond the Reef

  Gabino Iglesias

  Being a parent and being a junkie are almost the same thing.

  Both pull at you with an undeniable strength that makes you feel like you’re at the mercy of something infinitely more powerful than you could ever imagine. Both things affect your health in myriad ways because they destroy your sleep patterns and come between you and eating and exercising. Both things make you tired, happy, sad, desperate, angry, and frustrated. Both things become so ingrained in your life that you can’t fathom existing in their absence. Both things demand all your money and suck up all your time with the power of a thousand black holes. Both climb to the top of your list of priorities with incredible speed and an unapologetic forcefulness that shatters your sense of control and fragments your sense of self. Both can fill you with joy one minute and then replace that joy with absolute dread the next. Both become the core of what and who you are. Being a parent and a junkie are two things that can make you feel the true power of a warm embrace and then fucking kill you, shatter your soul, or make you do incredibly dangerous things without a second thought.

  I know these things very well because I’m both. I know because I’m writing this in a shitty motel room in Condado, Puerto Rico, and I hope that whoever finds me turns this in to my wife and, more importantly, to my daughter Angelica. My daughter is my life, and I hope reading this will help her understand that her dad was a good man. Yeah, a flawed man, but a good man none the less. I also hope whoever reads this believes every single word I’m about to write, and then spreads the words so that no one else ends up in the same position I’m currently in.

  As I write this, there’s a darkness coming, bubbling in my very bones, haunting me from the streets. I don’t have much time to write. I know it. The thing I fear most is just outside that door…

  First, let me say I never meant to become a fucking junkie. Hell, I don’t think a single addict out there started out looking to become a junkie or knowing where that first taste of dope would lead. Becoming an addict doesn’t happen in a day. Just like falling in love or getting old, becoming a junkie is something that happens to you over time, like a glacier creating a canyon, and it’s something you never notice until it’s too late. Yeah, drugs are so damn glorious they shut down the part of your brain that dishes out common sense. If you, like me, didn’t have much of it to begin with, you’re royally fucked.

  The way in for me was stress. Financial stress. Professional stress. Every damn kind of stress you can think of was eating me up. Stress is an acid that corrupts your insides and destroys your mood. Stress is like high blood pressure; a silent killer that rusts you from the inside out until you’re nothing more than a husk of whatever it is you were before stress devoured you.

  I’m a first-generation college student. I paid for my college degree doing odd jobs and taking whatever money I could get in loans. My parents and teachers had convinced me education was the way out of the barrio, and I believed them. Little did I know they had no idea what they were talking about. Everyone has a pocketful of solutions for you, but if you look at them with a critical eye, you’ll soon realize they are in trouble themselves. In my case, I listened to those who talked about education like it was the rope ladder that would allow folks like me to climb out of every hole. What they didn’t tell me is that the best thing you can do when you’re done climbing up that rope is to make a noose, insert your head, and use it to hang your overeducated-ass from the nearest tree.

  In my case, all I had at the end of four years was a useless degree in anthropology, a ton of debt, and some awful decisions. If you take anything from this, my dear Angelica, make it this: every person you meet is two or three bad decisions away from being a junkie, homeless, dealing with a horrible disease, or getting a bullet to the back of the head. The kicker? All humans are born flawed, naturally defective. All you can aim for is making the right decisions most of the time so that things balance out positively and you keep your life, and your sanity, together. I love you with all my heart and hope you read this someday and decide not to judge me.

  Protecting you from the horrors I have unleashed is the reason I’m in this shitty room that smells like cigarette smoke, wet carpet, and broken dreams.

  After four hard years and graduating college, I couldn’t even afford an apartment. I had no job. I had no money to feed myself and I had no other option than to move back home. That meant fighting with my father daily. If I wasn’t out there knocking on doors or working construction, in his eyes, I wasn’t even trying. It didn’t matter to him that I spent hours every day looking for opportunities on my phone, sending out resumes, going on interviews. None of that m
attered because he was struggling himself and I was just another mouth to feed.

  You know what? I understand him now. I really do. Being a father is so strange, so difficult and scary, that I’ve learned to forgive parents who fuck up. You kids don’t come into this world with an instruction booklet. Instead, we have to rely on our heightened senses, a few instincts, community support, and a bunch of baggage and nonsense that older generations shove down our throats.

  I’m rambling and I don’t have time to ramble, so apologies when that happens. My head hurts, I keep stopping to pace the room and look out the window. I’m not sure how much time I have before the outside world comes crashing in. You need to know how it started.

  I was broke after college, living at home, and was ready to do whatever I had to do, and then something happened.

  Six weeks after graduation, when I was ready to give up and go wash dishes, my friend Tony offered me a job selling stolen jewelry at the beach. I was an anthropologist, I studied cultures, I would do great at sales, right? I spent each day on the beach hustling customers while breathing in ocean air so rich with salt I swear it mutates all of us. Most days were spent looking at women in bikinis and old dudes walking their dogs, but when it was overcast and the beach empty, I’d remember horror movies I watched and thought about strange creatures coming out of the ocean at night. I didn’t make much money on those days, but the pay was enough to hand my father a few bags of groceries and get him off my back. Then one day a guy put a gun to my face and took every ounce of gold and every diamond I had and left me with stained underwear and a profound aversion to criminal endeavors.

  I didn’t give up. I don’t give up. Ever.

  After the jewelry thing, I managed to land a job. I was hired by an insurance company to look through old files and figure out who had fucked up and when. According to the woman who hired me, someone with my education would be able to “think outside the box” and identify problems. I hated the job from the start, but it paid well and I needed the money. I moved into a 244-square foot studio near San Juan with my first check. I was able to afford food with the second. Soon, I could afford weed, which made me forget work in the afternoons. It took me back to my high school days and getting high on the beach. It made me feel carefree as a crashing wave. Then a guy at work named Juan who was always happy introduced me to Oxycontin.